Metal Reviews

Can you recommend a strong argument in favor of positivism? Is Comte any good? I haven't had the chance to actually read this stuff yet.

Never read Comte, mainly because I didn't think I'd get too much out of it in comparison to more recent writers.

The obvious one is Popper, although iirc he doesn't like the term "positivist". There's a book called "the positivist dispute in German sociology" which is a collection of point-counterpoints between Popper and Adorno (semi-Marxist Frankfurt School philosopher). My uni supervisor recommended it to me and said that Popper basically rips Adorno apart, because he is the only one capable of talking about evidence properly. Adorno seems to be arguing for a faith based position where we just assume that there must be a dialectical relationship between everything.

However, what is interesting IMO is how much room for agreement there is. Adorno is often accused of not being willing to submit his ideas to empirical testing, but in this book he is quite clear that he is not against that, really. He just sees a limit to empirical work, leaving gaps to be filled by a creative theory.

No. When you've done something enough times it starts to loose its emotional/spiritual impact. You gradually desensitise yourself to the moral inhibitions of a symbolic gesture that are (in part) what fuels the impact of the experience. This is of course a part of the point of the ceremony: You gradually break down the moral substance of the ceremony itself, which helps you transcend its inherent meaning, by desensitising yourself to the moral/religious connotations of the objectively insignificant act of pissing on a what is essentially just a piece of bread. Then you move on to new sacrileges and debaucheries in order to break down their moral/religious connotations and continue the strife/pleasures until there is no moral or religious inhibitions left (a never ending struggle). If anything is holy it shall be blasphemed and desecrated. It's a stepwise deconstruction of morals right down to their spiritual fundament. When (hypothetically) the task is done you have felt every imaginable pleasure and transcended every imaginable moral constraint. At that point you have transcended all the guilt of this world and you are truly free. A god amongst men and this world will be too small for you.





How are you going to undertake any spiritual pursuits from a starting point of denial of spirituality? Doesn't your journey end before it's even started if you need scientific or logical justification before even testing the limits of a spiritual experience? If you actually feel something during a specific act without being able to explain it rationally, is it a less valid experience than if you could? Is the experience itself not enough to make it relevant? If not, you are limiting yourself through your denial.

The fact that you can actually feel something even if it might come from your own psyche, expectations or social conditioning is all the justification you need to further explore it. You might (and probably will) learn something about yourself. If you just dismiss it as irrational artefact you have severely limited your own possibilities for learning about things that might be bigger than what can be explained by your current logic.

Take this example:



You would like to see the face of a christian when confronted with an act of desecration. Why? Do you generally like to make other people feel bad? If you do, then you might just be a disagreeable person. If on the other hand, you would like it because of its inherent spiritual meaning (the desecration of what the christian perceives as holy), then it is a desire to invert a spiritual moral that you despise. You are actually acknowledging the spiritual nature of the act. If spitting on a cross feels any differently than spitting on any other piece of wood it can only be due to its spiritual meaning. Try it out and see what you feel instead of just assuming that you feel nothing. Meditate on it for a while and look as deep into yourself as you can, but be careful. What you'll find is Satan. You can choose to flee from this fact or you can acknowledge it. Maybe there is yet an epiphany in store for you.

Careful, I'm not denying spirituality. I'm denying superstition- that doesn't mean that I can't explore the creative and emotional impulses of my own mind and body. Furthermore, I don't reject anything that can't be empirically or rationally explained for myself, I simply do not accept it as a factual knowledge statement. As far as personal/spiritual value goes, certain ideas, certain attitudes, certain scenarios can be incredibly powerful- I am aware of this.

Regarding your acts of moral liberation- is it not useless if you don't recognize the moral authority in religious elements in the first place? Desecrating a Christian host would to me seem entirely insignificant, because it never held any value for me in the first place. And as for the explanations to my desire to witness the reactions to such a ritual, it is simply out of amusement. I laughed my ass off last year when a college student took a communion wafer "hostage" after it had undergone transubstantiation- the Christians claimed he was holding Jesus hostage. I laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
However, the differentiation present between spitting on a cross or spitting on a piece of wood does not need to necessarily be ethical or spiritual- it may be a desire to offend, to provoke the self-served moral sanctimoniousness of the religious. As such, the value in the act is not of the inherent moral conflict between the holy and the desecration, but of the simple act of rebellion.

Back when I was researching all this, Satanism repelled me because it's so much a reaction against Christianity. By rebelling, you're admitting that there's something to Christianity - you can find your own spiritual self perfectly well without putting it in these terms, and there seems very little benefit to Satanism as opposed to Buddhism or other atheistic philosophies, aside from highlighting the self-power stuff which should be obvious to anyone. Plus, it's extremely selfish, a church led by Ayn Rand's way of thought.

Christ, that sounded like Noodles.

(I'm obv. assuming you're LaVeyan or whatever Satanist as opposed to WOOP WOOP BURN DA KINGDOM OF HEAVEN AND RAPE UP DA CHRIST Satanism)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... uested=all

You see, it's articles like this that lead me to think that everything could be subject to the scientific method, all we need to do is find the connection to evolutionary theory.

It's a good example of why people in the natural sciences should be kept well, well away from the social sciences.

He is convinced that everything we do can be put down to neurological impulses that are tied in to the ultimate urge for reproduction to which all else is subordinated. I haven't read his paper, admittedly, but that's all he is saying in this article, and it is incredibly, painfully reductionist. Even if there IS some common neurological programming, how does he even begin to decipher the ways in which different environments, different ideologies, different experiences, different jobs, different religions, different cultural environments, different levels of resource availability, impact upon each individual persons brain?

The idea that people always act with "rational self-interest" is hardly new in social science, and it seems to be fairly close to his perspectives. But it is such a flawed concept. For a start, how the hell do you define self-interest? People do so in radically different ways. Monetary gain, a comfortable life, professional prestige... then you have to answer what leads people to identify with collective causes... Why do some people aim to follow their self-interest individually, by working super hard and impressing the boss, and others by joining a trade union and improving their conditions collectively? The idea that those reasons are down to neurology and some evolutionary urges seems ridiculous to me.

You're ignoring all the hawt chicks that work for unions.

http://www.wvinter.net/~haught/pent2.html So this is an atrocious source but I swear I've heard this story before in school.

I know, I know. And yeah I wasn't saying either of these could top the Catholics, the most despicable and immoral of all religions in my book.

None of the main religions condone murder so this argument is stupid if you're going to say that.

I could actually believe it of Burma, fucked up place.



It's a minefield, but Judaism does in certain cases, as does any religion that follows the Old Testament. What I was getting at was that ahimsa - nonviolence - is an essential tenet of Buddhism where it isn't in Islam, Christianity or Judaism.

The so-called "simple" act of rebellion is a superficial interpretation. That's what your rational mind calls it. You presuppose that rebellion has intrinsic meaning. Does it? What imbues it with actual relevance from your point of view? You left your desire to rebel and offend unexplained and stopped your train of thought at acknowledging the desire. But where does this desire come from? Admit that you enjoy it just for the sake of the feeling it gives you and then think about why. You do realise that the parts of your text that I highlighted are all aspects of Satan. How do you explain your desire rationally?

Desecration with witnesses is just a demonstration. You can do it and project the rush you get on the fact that other people get offended. It's safe and easy and you don't have to reflect on your personal position towards the act as much as the relation to the spectators. If you spit on a cross with no spectators besides you and your spiritual self (your mind or whatever god you choose to embrace) you have to reflect on the feeling it gives you without being able to place the origin of feeling anywhere but inside yourself. Now this is where you start to actually move something. Solitary desecration serves a purpose of enlightenment because it's projected inwards. Desecration with spectators is just a public provocation that serves no purpose beyond getting attention and having fun. If you try it I'm very sure that you will feel something no matter how much you think that you will not. What your logic deems irrelevant might not be irrelevant from a spiritual point of view.





Of course I admit to the relevance of christianity. I just choose opposition. The fact that e.g. desecration can actually be felt when you do it without spectators makes it relevant. No matter if it is a construct of my mind, an actual deity or something else it's relevant for this significance alone. You reacted with some chock to my tales of desecration and that means it's relevant for you too as it seems to be a factor in your understanding of the world and something that is actually potent in terms of emotion. If you react to the iconography why do you deem it irrelevant? It doesn't make sense. It's all symbolism and that's the point, but it's very potent symbolism. Symbols and archetypes are tools for working with concepts that are too abstract for your logic.

Buddhism has a lot of good perspectives on enlightenment, materialism and self-exploration and it offers a lot of great operational advice on meditation etc.. However it is still a normative religion that restricts you in several ways. I doubt that you even abide the 5 basic precepts of Sila.

I don't care about LaVey and the rest of the pack of charlatans, materialists and chock-tactics. I prefer a more 'traditional' approach. It is a spiritual path, not a material philosophy.

I repeat, reliance on reason for factual claims does not renege the validity of personal spiritual experiences.

I don't know why I enjoy the act of rebellion for its own sake. Psychological conditioning, probably. I'm sure a psychiatrist could tell me. This doesn't mean that I'm not "open" (for lack of a better word) to currently unexplainable psycho-spiritual reactions.

By the way, I'm loving this conversation. Cheers, mate.

Ah, I'm not actually a Buddhist, just am open to the idea. Might try it out at some point, we'll see.

Speaking of awesome religions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagannath

Yes, this is a good discussion and an interesting topic and the nuances of the divide (if there is one) between psychology and spirituality are extremely relevant from both a religious and a secular/rationalist point of view. I have to admit, however, that my initial post and the tales of desecration is transgressive fiction at best and pure trolling at worst. The fundamental ideas I have discussed are sincere, but inspired by Dead Machine's religious guff I thought that the forum needed more religious trolling. Therefore I wrapped my thoughts up in some ORTHODOX DEVIL WORSHIP FTW!!!1! kind of mentality. I had expected more people would disapprove of this, but alas, my trolling skills are weak.

My real ideological basis could probably be described as nihilism in that I try to consider everything without a predefined context of understanding, value judgements and morals. That goes for both religious and rationalist/atheist values. Both are a limitation to your perception of reality since they leave you a place to fall back on an explanation from an external source instead of having to reflect on things to their ultimate meaning (if one such exists). This line from your post is an illustration of this:



You stop reflecting and accept an assumed 'scientific' standard of explanation. It's convenient and lends you an escape from having to try to understand your own nature. Like I said earlier it doesn't matter where an emotional reaction comes from. Even if it might be from your social conditioning it's worthy of exploration if you can feel it. From my point of view it is not much better to fall back on the standardised explanation "psychological conditioning, probably" than it is to fall back on the standardised explanation of god, allah etc. it's just another excuse to leave hard questions unanswered. People tend to be more rationalizing than really rational which is a severe limitation to their understanding; particularly if they put too much faith in their own conscious reasoning. To be more precise: "Psychological conditioning, probably" is not a factual claim. It is an interpretation that you form without reflection taken from the canon of rationalism.

I don't see a problem with using religious symbols and terminology in an effort to understand something going on in your spirit/soul/mind as long as you are aware that it's all symbolism. The mind doesn't always work in a linear sequence of rational/scientific arguments so why try to force it if not because of a 'doctrine' that tells you that it's desirable to do so? Symbols are amazingly communicative on levels that are much deeper than what your logic is able to explain. The symbols can be from christian, muslim, pagan or whatever tradition as long as you understand their meaning on an intuitive basis. Have you ever read Jung's "Man and His Symbols" or indeed any of Jung's works? His ideas are immensely inspirational.




I have a definite sympathy for buddhism -particularly that of zen- as a philosophy and as an idea of self-exploration. I generally respect contemplative religions and their practitioners. That goes for members of contemplative christian orders as well even though I regard many of christianity's core values as sick, perverted and stupid (e.g. the fundamental idea that man is a "sinful" creature set apart from the rest of nature). Practising a faith (using the symbols and methods of that faith for exploration etc.) is something very different from just adopting a moral standard and a fixed set of rituals. It's the difference between introspection vs. externalisation of spirituality that determines its value. Regular meditation is very giving no matter what spirituality one holds; even if that is no spirituality at all. It's no more mystical or esoteric than what is already inside you.

Heh, thought that was a bit OTT.

On a side matter, my parents knew this guy, who died recently:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/no ... y-obituary

Pretty cool guy for a Bishop.

Would have put this in the political thread, but it's not rly political.

Plagiarist!

This just in: Switzerland is fucking retarded. This is why direct democracy does not work.

Yes. Rather it is up to the caste of contemporary politicians, still high on their May '68 utopia, to act directly against the wishes of the largely conservative population and enforce the fairytale of multiculturalism upon them.